A group of teenage runaways (among them Lara Flynn Boyle, Dermot Mulroney, David Arquette, Christian Slater and Will Smith, making his film debut) try to survive on the streets of Los Angeles, daily confronting drugs, prostitution, violence and a criminal justice system dangerously indifferent to their plight. The film plays out in an episodic, increasingly tragic structure, and reveals that sometimes the scariest prospect a young person can contemplate is returning home.